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One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

IMAGE: School of Rembrandt, Old Man in Prayer (c. 1640)

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Observe how Epictetus presents God’s assignment to us as an honor, not as a burden. . . .

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Justice gets swept aside by anger, and temperance gets smothered by lust, all because wisdom isn’t taking a stand with courage. I can still do better. . . .

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“And this, according to Musonius, should be one of the primary objectives of philosophy: to reveal to us our shortcomings so we can overcome them and thereby live a good life.”

—Musonius Rufus

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The Old Monastery, 1862, Anton Altmann II

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On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (28 February, 1840) 

IMAGE: Caspar David Friedrich, Ulrich von Hutten's Grave (c. 1824) 

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Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Greatness 

IMAGE: Ludwig Deutsch, The Scholars (1901) 

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To occupy myself with fleeting pleasures, gaudy trinkets, and petty bickering is a waste of my gifts, like using a gold bar as a paperweight. . . .

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Meditations, Marcus Aurelius.

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As enticing as money, fame, and pleasure might appear, they will always leave us empty, because they aren’t really about us at all. . . .

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Delphic Maxims 78 

Ἀκούων ὅρα 

Discern what you have heard 

IMAGE: Joseph Severn, Keats Listening to a Nightingale on Hampstead Heath (1845) 

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Route 66

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This is the pedigree of our noble birth. . . .

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For some to win, it is never necessary for others to lose. Happiness isn’t a pissing contest. . . .